Conventionally, a multi-functional peripheral having a scan function, a document filing function, a network transmission function, a print function, an electronic mail transmission function, and a facsimile transmission function has been widely used. In the multi-functional peripheral, when a document is scanned, the scanned document can be filed as electronic data directly, transmitted through a network, printed, transmitted by an electronic mail, or transmitted by facsimile.
When a document is scanned in such a multi-functional peripheral, there is a case where the scanned document includes a blank page. Thus, technologies have been proposed that an alert is given when a blank page is scanned (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2002-116665), when there is a blank page, preview display is performed to cause a user to confirm the scanned content (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2010-16770), preview display is performed with a blank page skipped (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2010-56803), or pages other than a blank page are transmitted by facsimile or an electronic mail (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2006-180343).
Moreover, a multi-functional peripheral capable of transmitting the same document image which has been scanned to a plurality of destinations by facsimile and an electronic mail concurrently has been also developed. However, a document transmitted by an electronic mail can not be used as a formal document, because even if the document has a seal thereon and color print is performed on the side of an apparatus which has received the electronic mail, the document image can be altered. On the other hand, since it is highly difficult to alter a document image transmitted by facsimile, the document image is treated as being equivalent to a formal document, and a document which needs to be saved as evidence, such as an order form and a slip is transmitted by facsimile.
Note that, when a document image is used as being equivalent to a formal document, exclusion of a blank page is not admitted. In the conventional multi-functional peripheral, when the same document which has been scanned is transmitted by facsimile and an electronic mail concurrently, image data of the document is transmitted with a blank page included even in the transmission by the electronic mail according to the condition of the facsimile transmission. FIG. 14 is a view for explaining conventional processing for transmitting image data of a document. As shown in FIG. 14, when facsimile transmission is included in data processing to be executed, a blank page is included in both image data 150 for electronic mail transmission and image data 160 for facsimile transmission.
However, in the above described conventional technologies, when image data of a scanned document is transmitted by facsimile and an electronic mail concurrently, the document is transmitted with a blank page included in both the electronic mail transmission and the facsimile transmission, thus posing a problem that a user can not make different selection as to whether or not to include a blank page for each image data processing such as electronic mail transmission and facsimile transmission.